Conversational Risk

Have you ever met a person that is so adamant in their beliefs that they shut everyone around them down? I have a “friend” like this. I put friend in quotations because I don’t know if I can actually be friends with this person because I can never get past this personality trait. Whenever we stumble upon something she feels strongly about, she broadcasts her opinion in a loud and aggressive manner. This puts me and many of the people off of any further conversation with her just in case we stumble across another landmine. I am not averse to arguing a point with someone, so why is it different with her?


I think it has to do with risk. Every time you converse with someone, you risk the possibility of changing your mind. In small matters, like if you whether you like Crest or Colgate tooth paste, changing your preference is no big deal. However, when we discuss more weighty views, the consequences of changing are more serious. So when we enter in a conversation with someone, we evaluate whether they will share our views, whether they will ridicule our beliefs, and if they might change us. So is change bad? No, but subconsciously, if you change because of something someone said you may feel that you are admitting that you are wrong and that is a difficult thing for most people. Now if you are admitting that you are wrong about the type of toothpaste you like, it does not change who you are and most people won’t even know that you switched. However, if you suddenly realize that Sponge Bob is the anti-Christ, then you have some real soul searching to do. You have to reevaluate previous conversations and thoughts. You have to rewatch every episode from your new anti-sponge viewpoint. You have to tell your friends at some point. Every time someone remembers your previous stand on the issue, you have to explain to them that you have suddenly developed a fear of a sponge that wears pants. Changing is difficult!


So, how about those people that broadcast their opinions so forcefully that they shut everyone around them down. They, who want so much to change everyone around them, instead force a situation of zero change because no one will engage them. Why—because they bring nothing to the table. If a conversation was a poker game and all the players brought “the possibility of changing” as their chips, the loud adamant people are the cheapskates that expect to play for free. They risk nothing and their opponents with chips on the table have no incentive to play against them. It may seem at first glance that these people are risking plenty by the fact that they are bringing up the topic in the first place. However, this is deceptive because while they are shouting their beliefs at the top of their lungs, they are putting out the vibe that they are not going to listen to anything anyone else has to say. They drown out other opinions by yelling, intimidating and pounding the table. They refuse to risk changing their opinion and expect their victim to take all the risk of changing, while they incur none.


So, let’s say that you are one of these loud people and you have alienated everyone that could be your friend. How can you change your ways? Start by realizing that if you want to change someone’s mind, you have to accept the idea that you might also be wrong. You have to allow them a little room to try to change your mind. It has to be an exchange of ideas, not a dictation from one person to another. Why bother to change (besides the fact that you are losing friends faster than the smelly kid in class)? Because one day you will meet someone just like you who shuts you down and will shatter your argument, leaving you to pick up the pieces and fuse your ideas back into a brittle shell. Soften your beliefs. Take a risk. Do not get violent. Learn to be the reed in the wind.


Then there are people like me, who avoid risk by avoiding the topic all together. I have learned to cherish some of my beliefs, like the idea that televangelists are evil. Now I refuse to reexamine these ideas. I scream at the TV whenever the 700 club comes on so that I don’t accidentally hear what they are saying while I fumble to change the channel. I won’t engage my grandmother on the topic of religion or politics. I know that, because I am unsure about what I feel in religion, I don’t want extreme views until I have settled into my own opinion. When it comes to politics, I know what I believe, but I am not well informed and so could not defend what I believe. It is not that I am afraid that someone will be able to change my opinion, but that I will be beaten back and forth like a tetherball, yet still remain attached to my political pole. In other words, I will look foolish for my beliefs. So on these topics, I do not engage unless the person is like me and we might benefit from each other’s opinions without being torn apart. Advice to myself: get educated on politics and figure out what I believe. Since I am too lazy to do the former and too confused to do the latter, perhaps I should just let others persuade me into new beliefs…as long as I don’t develop a love of sponges in pants.

Library of Babel

Inspired in part by an essay called the “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges.

One of the many things that I want to do in my lifetime is write. I have accomplished this to some degree, but I still have a long road ahead of me. However, every time I walk into a Barnes and Noble or Borders I get so discouraged. It just gives me a glimpse into the vastness of the written word, like a great chasm a person could fall into. I often hear complaints about how BN is “the enemy of the midlist novel”, so I consider the stock on the shelves of Barnes and Noble as the tip of the iceberg. Only the most popular books make it onto the shelves. Yet there is so much more information in written in books, magazines, and now on the internet. It would be impossible for one person to read everything that exists, so how does one person choose what to read?

I have always felt like I am not well read. I hear about people who are considered well read, but I have to wonder if that is even possible. I guess I believe that it is possible to be well read in a particular area, but not in general. But I also feel that every new generation has a greater task being well read. Consider science literature about 100 years ago. It was practically nonexistent. It was easy to be well read then because of the simple fact that there wasn’t that much published. Even if a person was very prolific in his studies and discoveries, there was no drive to publish it. Fast forward to a “publish or perish” mindset, where half finished studies are published and some publish controversial findings just so that they will be cited by others and improve their importance on some numerical scale. How is a new graduate student to become well read with all this paper to wade through? I once heard a professor comment on how poorly read new graduate students were. I wanted to jump across the table and throttle him. He had been in the field for close to 40 years. Of course he was well read; he had been reading almost 2 of my life times. Back when he started reading science literature, they were still scratching the notes on cave walls! Of course they weren’t actually, but the science literature was much less prolific when he began to read it, so he had some chance of getting a handle on it and has been able to keep up since then. How is a new graduate student ever supposed to be well read when there is a whole history about to crash over them like a tsunami? And it is increasing every year!!!

So back to my point about Barnes and Noble. What I said above about science is true of most literature fields and one of the recommendations that are often given to aspiring writers is to be well read in their field. So as an aspiring Science Fiction/Fantasy writer I have been considering this and looking around me at SF/F literature and feeling just as overwhelmed as in the science realm, despite the fact that I have been reading since I was a little kid. Then I start to worry that whatever I manage to produce will get lost like a dust mote in a sandstorm. So I walk back out of B&N with my head hanging a little lower. Fortunately I have a short memory and am soon optimistic again. I think that even if I never get my work published, it will still be there and a member of the Library of Babel. I think that I could potentially just post it on line for anyone to read. Ha! Then I think about all those other people out there who have similarly posted for free so that someone will read their work and all those people who will never let anyone read what they have written and it just cascades out before me as this never ending waterfall of paper. Aaahhh!!! Now I know that the SF/F in B&N is the tip of “all published SF/F” iceberg, and that “all published SF/F” is just the tip of “all SF/F ever written” iceberg.

Finally. I like to look at the past and look forward to the future. I look at authors like Austin, Tolkien and Shakespeare. Are those authors so popular because there were among the few published authors of their time or because they are truly magical in some way? I think there is something special about their writing. Shakespeare and Austen practically need a translator to be understood, yet people still puzzle it out and enjoy the story. In fact, one of the reasons I keep going back to Austen is because I puzzle out some new little joke every time I read it. Tolkien, I am not sure about. One of the reasons it was so popular was because he was world builder. He created the rich and complex world with its own problems and races and topography and history. It was new. But I think about children of this day who might read other books which are also world builder books and I wonder if, by the time they read Tolkien, will that phenomenon have lost its magic? Will Tolkien be swept aside by that Potter kid? I don’t know, but it is an interesting question to ponder which books will remain in an average library through the future ages.

So as I send this little mini essay like a hopeful paper boat into the ocean of online information, I wonder if it will mean anything. Even if no one reads it, in the end, I have arranged this series of words and letters in a pattern that has pleased me. I have created something new to be shelved in the Library of Babel.